Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Daily Archives: September 21, 2017

Easily the most popular thing I have posted so far this week… or month… is the announcement about the Warzone Extraction event in EVE Online. Google has sent many people my way, a pretty sure sign that the mechanics of the event aren’t clear to people.

EVE Valkyrie laughs at your confusion

So I figured it might be worthwhile to share what I learned running through some of the sites.

This event is in the structure of The Agency, and as such events go, you get tasks under The Agency icon to complete, each with a 20 hour cool down before you can do it again. This time around there are just two tasks.

Warzone Extraction Tasks

One of the tasks is to complete a site, the other is to destroy 20 sleep ships, and they are worth 10 and 20 points respectively.

The sites themselves appear on your overview like the sites from previous events. The sites seem a bit more sparse than some past events. I had to go hunting for sites and rarely saw more than one in a system, with two in a single system being the max I noted. The sites appeared on my standard travel overview without having to add anything.

Warzone Extraction sites

When you warp to the site you will land near a ship called the Quartermaster. Sometimes, but not always, an alert will pop up with a message from him.

Message from the QM

There is also an acceleration gate there. When you activate the acceleration gate it sends you off to a pocket along with another message.

All the instructions you’ll get

When you land there will be some large collidable objects present. If you have hidden them on your overview you (because they can be annoying and generally don’t mean much) you will have to change that or navigate by just eyeballing the wrecks in space. There are five ship wrecks labeled Alpha to Echo and a station wreck.

Objects in the area

This where I got a bit confused because the very first site I tried also had a container visible. I checked it and it was empty, so I moved on to find another site thinking it had been done.

Container confusion

However, I later discovered that if the site is still there it isn’t completely done. But what do you do?

In the end I figured out what you have to do is approach each wreck. When you get withing ~2,500 meters of a wreck it may give you a message. The message might be about a container being discovered. At that point the container will show up on your overview. It might be at the wreck or it might be at the station wreck that is also on grid with you. Once a container popped up in both locations. I am not sure why.

In the container is the trinary relic that the quartermaster is looking for. You can toddle over to it, loot the container, and you’ll be set for the Quartermaster’s Request task.

Off to collect the relic

The relics have their own wee bit of lore.

Tell me about the relics

The other message you may get is “Sleepers incoming!” at which point you’re going to have to fight.

I had read the post over at The Nosy Gamer about what to expect from the Sleepers that attack, the primary item being that they will use energy neutralizers on you to drain your capacitor in addition to warp scrambling and webbing you. As I noted on a comment over there, for the unsuspecting capsuleer this might turn Warzone into Murderzone.

With this in mind I went out armed for bear with a passively tanked Drake I had sitting around. It was the Clown Car entosis fit, but I swapped out the entosis module, cloak, and RLMLs for HMLs and a Auto Targeting system. Later I changed out the HMLs for heavy assault missiles just to get more damage. Fortunately meta HAM launchers are dirt cheap on the market.

The assault of the Sleepers is keyed to the security level of the system you are in. In a 0.9 system I drew a pair of Sleeper frigates that went down to a single heavy missile volley. They barely touched my capacitor. Down in a 0.5 system I got frigates, destroyers, a cruiser, and a pair of battleships which combined to drain my capacitor in seconds.

Sleepers on the overview!

Of course, because this is a CCP event, the NPCs weren’t visible on the overview by default, which is why I brought the auto targeting system. I had enough capacitor for it to activate for a few cycles and it targeted the Sleepers for me, at which point I could add them to my overview settings.

Of course, this being CCP, even the names were messed up on the first night when you tried to add them.

Wait, what?

That has since been fixed, though you still have to add each class of ship… frigate, destroyer, cruiser, battleship… to the overview separately. The overview conspires to murder you. That seems to be one of its functions.

Anyway, at that point, webbed, scrammed, and capacitor empty, you’re committed to the fight. You will be mighty unhappy if you were depending on modules that required any power. Rail guns and lasers won’t fire, repair modules are useless, and you won’t be scooting away with your prop module.

Resigned to your fate

My Drake was way over-tanked and never dropped below 88% shields, so I could just sit there and blast away at things. I chose the Warden first, as it will rep other ships. Then I hit the frigates, as they will aggressively go after your drones. Once they were gone, it was out with the drones for the cruiser and then the battleships.

The short range of the HAMs was not a limitation most of the time as the Sleepers stay within web and scram range for the most part, which keeps them in your damage envelope. There was one Sleeper battleship that pulled range on me and seemed to be able to neut me out to almost the 75km mark. That put him way out of HAM range, which was 25km for my alt. But that also meant he couldn’t web or scram me, so I decided to let him be rather than chase him down in a slow slog without a prop mod. I was marginally faster than him, but it looked like it might take me as much as 15 minutes to close into shooting range. Screw that.

The wrecks yielded boosters from the event… the damage and speed boosters were of value, but the tank boosters were for active tanks which, given the neuts present, wasn’t much good at that time… as well as Sleeper components to sell on the open market.

Interestingly, there were NPC buy orders up when I got around to selling those components.

The Emperor Family bought my stuff

I don’t know if this is a standard thing or if CCP foresaw the market getting saturated because of the event and decided to put a floor on the price. I suspect the latter because I saw a lot of much lower buy orders out there. That about off-set the drones I lost, the ammo, and the HML launchers I bought then traded out.

Anyway, that is getting ahead of myself.

Once you defeated the Sleepers and loot their wrecks, you’re ready to go. If you’re feeling diligent and have not yet approached all the event wrecks you can do that until you have been to Alpha through Echo. I have had Sleepers appear on two wrecks in a site. But if you’re set, you just motor to the acceleration gate that is close by and activate it. That will take you back to the Quartermaster. Approach his ship and put the relic in it… it acts like a cargo container… and you’ll get credit for the site. If that event task is active, you’ll get 10 points. It if isn’t you seemed to get squat. Such is life.

If you need to blow up more Sleepers then it is off to another site, but first you might want to repair, especially if you’re drones are damaged. Fortunately there are publicly available citadels all over New Eden now, so you can just warp to one, tether, and wait a bit while it refills your capacitor and repairs your ship and drones. Then you’re ready to go again.

I did both of the tasks which was enough to get to the first prize from the event, a support kit from The Agency.

Reward unlocked!

The reward was another event booster, of which I already had half a dozen. So far I have just seen boosters and Sleeper drops. There was a promise of SKINs somewhere, both fantastic and new, but maybe I just haven’t hit one yet.